ROCHESTER Mich.
Students reported for class Thursday at a suburban Detroit university hours after professors reached a tentative agreement that ended a weeklong strike.
The three-year deal at Oakland University included more money for professors in the second year of the proposed contract, expanded health care choices, and it allowed faculty to have say on the school’s future, according to the union.
“This agreement proves beyond a doubt that we faculty were never concerned with economics,” said Karen Miller, vice president of the union’s chapter that represents 450 faculty members at the public four-year institution.
Professors on the 18,000-student campus went on strike Sept. 3, the day classes were to begin, after the university proposed a three-year wage freeze along with cuts in health-insurance benefits.
“We are extremely pleased to have found common ground on the issues that had been standing in the way of an agreement,” Virinder Moudgil, the university’s senior vice president and provost, said in a statement. The school said it would not comment on the details until the contract was ratified. The union said it likely would ratify the contract at the end of September.
Students said it was good to return to the largely commuter school in Rochester, about 20 miles north of Detroit.
